In-Flight Movies to… Canada

Our next stop on the In-Flight Movies series is Canada! I’ll admit to you here and now, Canada was HARD. I could find plenty of movies that were filmed in Canada. But, were used as stand-ins for different cities. And, I found Canadian films that didn’t show off the landscape as much as I would have liked. Sigh. So I’m opening it up to you. If you’ve seen any Canadian films that portray different Canadian communities and flaunt that stunning landscape… Please send them my way or comment below!

Canada

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010)

This was the first film I thought of when I started researching films set and filmed in Canada. It’s one of the only films I could think of that uses Toronto for Toronto and not for New York City or somewhere else. Which is great! It’s a film about a man named Scott Pilgrim who must defeat his girlfriend’s seven evil exes in order to be with her. Usually in some kind of video game style. It’s filmed all over the city and, as you can see from the above picture, the film includes an authentic Canadian winter. So incredibly beautiful!

Mommy (2014)

Xavier Dolan is practically a household name. If your household happens to know anything about the contemporary Canadian film scene, of course. He has been making waves in the indie film industry as a young (he’s only 26) director/writer/actor/producer. He is from Montreal in Quebec, Canada and this is where Mommy almost exclusively is set. Mommy is Dolan’s latest film. It’s about a mother who, having lost her husband, is facing difficulties raising her often violent child. Yeah, it’s not very uplifting so it might not put you quite in the travel mood, but it is in French which is commonly spoken in French Canadian parts of Canada. As one would imagine.

Rose Marie (1954)

By far the oldest example of Canadian cinema, but possibly the most aesthetically beautiful. In this version of Rose Marie, the titular girl is an orphaned ‘tomboy’ who falls in love with the Mountie who took her in and raised her (ew, gross). She is also a Trapper. This film was special for it’s time as it was filmed in colour and cinemascope. This helps the audience feel the epic-ness of the landscape. The film was set and partially filmed in the Canadian rockies. If you like this kind of film, I would also recommend Hudson’s Bay (1941).

10 thoughts on “In-Flight Movies to… Canada”

You are right, there are not too many movies that happily boast they are in Canada, even if it stands in for the rest of the North American continent in TV and movies regularly. Not sure if is quite what you are after.. but I am pretty sure all David Cronenberg’s early movies were actally filmed in Toronto – “Shivers” and “Rabid” certainly were.. and showed off a certain side of the city

Yeah, it is weird how many films made in Canada aren’t set in Canada, Every Frame A Painting did a really good video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU. When I go to Toronto for the film festival later this year, I’m going to try and see as many sites from Scott Pilgrim as I can, a Scott Pilgrimage if you will (really wish I’d thought of that pun when recording the Wicker Man podcast). For other films set in Canada I recommend one of Xavier Dolan’s previous films, Lawrence Anyways, and I also recommend The Red Violin, one of the segments of which is set in Montreal.

I remember watching a video about the fact that Canada is the go-to America for the film industry. It’s not that expensive and it has the ability to translate to almost any big US city. I think it was about Vancouver but I can’t be sure. So it’s nice to see that at least some movies actually TAKE place in Canada!

So tough finding films that are filmed and set in Canada. SPvtW and Mommy are excellent examples, though. To be honest, it’s tough for me as an American to always know when a film I’m watching is supposed to be set in Canada because it’s rarely explained, and being American and never having been to Canada, I’ve no idea what to look for. Shame on me.